Sunday, May 8, 2016

The cheapest LN2 GPU pot ever.

GPU pots are expensive. Like really really expensive. Slims go for 100-200$ and can't handle any of the big GPUs high power GPUs. Fat pots are even more expensive ranging from 200-400$. So basically that means I can't run LN2 on GPUs............
......
.......or does it?

Ladies and gentlemen I present you the Tapester GPU LN2 pot.

It's not pretty but it doesn't leak LN2 and it should be enough for some hilarity on a live stream. So then what is the Tapester? It's a reference HD 4870 heatsink wrapped in a liberal amount of electrical tape. It will mount on 4800 and 5800 cards. It should also fit several other AMD cards but I don't have them so I neither care nor know.

Here's some pics of the first iteration with a few hundred ml of LN2 in it.

The surprisingly leak proof bottom

Pouring LN2 into this first version was a very wasteful affair since I didn't give the top much of a funnel into which to pour.

Also during the whole cooling process the pot was making some horrible cracking noises as the tape shrunk from the cold. One of the cracks even shook the whole pot

I let the pot defrost and dry before I did an inspection of the damage that the LN2 did to it.

This is the only place where I found a visible crack in the tape. I think this is the one that shook the pot when it cracked. I'm also pretty sure that the tape cracked because I stretched it too much when putting it on. Either way I'll just add more tape.

The bottom of the HD 4870 has a layer of plastic. The tape didn't stay stuck to this when I added LN2 so this are got an extra piece of tape to hold it together better.

This wasn't caused by the LN2 but by lazy tape placement. one thing I noticed is that the tape held best when it didn't have any loose edges so this had to go.

Here too the tape started coming off. The solution is obviously more tape.

I added some extra tape to the top for a proper funnel. After all if I can't get LN2 in the pot it isn't a good pot.

Here's the fixed bottom. The tape is just barely low enough to clear the center shim.

Here's a full frontal shot of the abomination.

And here it is fully insulated with 5mm armaflex and ready to roll. To test it I plan to just run some Unigine Heaven Basic preset with the 4790K on air cooling. If this works I'll have a few more HWpoints to add to my total. But much more importantly I will a working LN2 pot for 2 of my GPUs.Unfortunately I won't do much benching with this for a while because to get a good amount of points I'd also need LN2 on the CPU and I currently don't have the equipment needed to LN2 both a GPU and a CPU.

If you enjoy the content you see on Actually Hardcore Overclocking and would like to see more please share it or donate using the donate button in the top left of the site. All donations will be used to make more content even if just helps buy more themal paste. Right now though all donations will go towards a capture card.